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Book Review: The Performance Factor

I needed a great book on building high performance teams and I got it! The Performance Factor delivers the goods on what great teams look like, how great teams are formed, and what a leader needs to do lead a great team.

Honestly, the diagrams were some of the most helpful things in this books because it gave all of the concepts he spoke of, a face and a flow. This is a great book for any leader to read.

Here are a few of the quotes that rocked me:

"A team is a group of people who choose to cooperate in order to achieve exceptional results."

"To achieve exceptional results, high performance teams creatively divide the task and thn cooperate like mad."

"Leadership is the existence of people with power to mobilize others and set constraints - is an important ingredient in making participation work."

"As a manager I can demand compliance, but commitment is volunteered."

"Communication does not take place until someone receives the message and understands it as the sender intended."

"Just in time is the best time for training."

"You don't form teams, you build them."

This is a great book and I definitely recommend it!

The Twitter Experiment

I don't know if I'm going to like this, but I'm testing out Twitter.

If you want to follow what I'm doing, here's the link...

What is Deep? What is Shallow?

I believe there's a misnomer in the church. It's the definition of deep or shallow preaching. Deep preaching gets defined as doctrinal and shallow preaching is defined as applicational. I think we have our definitions wrong.

Shallow preaching is when a speaker tells you what the text means, but fails to tells you what the text can do in your life. Throwing out a few Greek words doesn't make preaching deep. Talking about ancient cultures doesn't make preaching deep. A person could stand up and read a commentary and do exactly what some define as "deep" preaching.

Deep preaching is when a Pastor explains what the text means but when proceeds to apply the text to our lives. What creates depth in a message is the connection between me and the text. If no connection is made, then we're still on the surface. The greater the connection to my life, the great the depth of the message.

Does this mean commentaries are shallow? Not at all. They serve a wonderful purpose and I have 100's in my office. But commentaries aren't preaching, they're explaining. And God has called preachers to be more than explainers. He's called us to be equippers. (Eph. 4:11-12)

Messages that have Rocked My World

I've never been to the Leadership Summit (Although I am registered this year thanks to my friends at this church who are graciously hosting - so to Troy and friends, thanks!)

Even though I've never attended the Summit, I have the messages of every year of the last 12 years of Leadership Summits. Honestly, this is the best leadership stuff on the planet. The best speakers, the most challenging and hard hitting topics. Bottom line: It's no joke.

Anyway, I finally got around to picking up the messages from 2007 (which only 4 were available - was I annoyed, to say the least! It ruined my collection - that's the OCD in me coming out :)

I've listened to 3 of the messages so far and they are unbelievable! The 2 Hybels sessions are grand slam home runs and the John Ortberg session "A Leader's Greatest Fear" was the stuff legends are made of! If you have listened to them, do yourself a favor and pick them up!

Baptism Podcast

A few months ago I recorded a podcast for Church Leader Insights on the subject of baptism and overcoming the barriers that people put up to baptism.

It's posted on their site as the featured podcast this month. You can check it out here

How did you get here?

I was checking my stats last night (something I rarely do) and saw that google was the referring address. But the searches that people made to get here were what made me laugh:

#1 - "Bob Franquiz" - kind of weird that people are googling my name (I thought I was only one that googled my name :)

#2 - "Tipping Etiquette for curbside service" (this made me laugh out loud!) If anyone's got a definitive answer on this, I'd love to hear it. Here are some words of wisdom on the subject: "Why tip someone for a job I'm capable of doing myself? I can deliver food. I can drive a taxi. I can, and do, cut my own hair. I did however, tip my urologist, because I am unable to pulverize my own kidney stones." - Dwight K. Shrute

#3 - "Pastor Bob Coy criticisms" - sorry, you won't find any of that here. If Bob had a fan club, I'd join :) Bob's one of my heroes of the faith.

#4 - "Batting Clean up" - that must have been Manny Ramirez looking for a couple of tips before he hits home run #500

#5 - "is jeff bezos dave murray iron maiden" - this could be the weirdest thing I've ever read. I'm a big fan of both Amazon.com and Iron Maiden (and I've had the pleasure of meeting Dave Murray and having him all my Iron Maiden LP's in 1992), but does this person think that Jeff Bezos is Dave Murray? I'm confused. Makes me want to run to the hills (sorry, I could resist :)

Needless to say, I think I'll be checking the referring addresses a little more often because this really made me laugh!

Sunday Stuff...

- Today was great! I always enjoy teaching Mother's Day service.
- My favorite part is acknowledging those that are there because their mom dragged them :)
- We were up in attendance (always a plus!)
- We did have a few cell phones go off at the 1st service. My only problem was when 1 person answered the phone. I stopped and stared the guy down until he hung up. It was awkward to say the least.
- We did Mother's Day portraits for every family. This was definitely the nicest I've seen our folks dressed up in quite some time :)
- We kicked off our Frequency series and I talked about the 4 qualities we need to develop to hear from God.
- Next week I'll be talking about how to test if something is from God or not.
- Because of all the Summer movies, we have to move our 3rd service to 11AM. Indiana Jones is cramping my style!
- I felt as though the 2nd service was the best one. I don't know about you, but this changes every week. Sometimes I think the 9:30 is better, other times I think the 11:15 is strongest. Then again, some weeks I drive home thinking all of them were duds :)

Out of space!

I've got 5 bookcases in my office... and they're completely packed. The bookcases at home... packed. 5 boxes in my garage... packed full of boxes.

Not sure where to go from here. I think the staff is going to have to start keeping some of my books in their offices :)

Book Review: The Ultimate Sales Machine

While the title isn't something that would draw me to the book, "The Ultimate Sales Machine" was a fantastic book! In it, the author shares 12 strategies to make your company more effective, and the parallels to church are considerable. Hands down, the best chapter of the book was the one on hiring. I really enjoyed the questions that he asks (I'll be asking them as well) and the reason behind the questions. If you're a Lead Pastor, you need to buy this book.

Here's a few great quotes to get you going:

- "Take time to sharpen your skills, your tools, and your resources, and you'll be more productive."

- "The average bad hire costs a company $60,000."

- A successful direct mail campaign absolutely depends on how regular and consistent your mailings are."

- In most companies, there's little or no training and there's rarely mandatory training."

- "The best of the best are always seeking to be better, so another area to explore with them is how dedicated they are to self-improvement."

- "The more you challenge superstars, the more you encourage them to overachieve."

New Series on Sunday

I'm so excited about teaching this series for the next 4 weeks. There is so much confusion inside and outside the church about God speaking. Does God still speak? How can we know it's really Him? How can I recognize God's voice from my own? All of these questions and more will be answered starting this Sunday!